Pianos, Insanity, and Whisky Breakdowns

Harriet is a four piece from LA and they'll be in town for SxSW. They released a video this week for I Slept With All Your Mothers, an incredible ballad about decent into madness and depravity. Although I'm a sucker for pianos, insanity, and whisky breakdowns the group should appeal to a broader audience as well. It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. Not my words (PKD).


Harriet "I Slept With All Your Mothers" from Harriet on Vimeo.





If you are learning the hard way and haven't heard yet, LC is throwing a party at Nasty's on Tuesday 13th March. RSVP and get more info on our facebook page www.facebook.com/SoLastChoice

The Origins of Tennis

Tennis originated from a 12th century French game called paume (meaning palm); it was a court game where the ball was struck with the hand. Paume evolved into jeu de paume and rackets were used. The game spread and evolved in Europe. In 1873, Major Walter Wingfield invented a game called Sphairistikè (Greek for "playing ball) from which modern outdoor tennis evolved.

The other Tennis originated in a philosophy class in college where Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore met and decided to form a band.

Tennis is following up their excellent Cape Dory with their even more excellent (in my opinion) Young and Old. It was produced by Black Keys' Patrick Carney. It's full of Alaina's signature ooohs and aaahs reminiscent of a better, simpler time, where tennis was played with wooden rackets and had no place in band names.

"Origins" is their single. They'll be promoting their new album during SxSW:




Photo courtesy of The Dailyer Nebraskan. (Where you can read an awesome interview with Tennis).

Yukon Blonde

As frustrated as I was by the crowds of SXSW last year, I did stumble across a few gems. A friend of mine kept pestering me to see Yukon Blonde, an indie pop/rock outfit from Vancouver. When I finally caved, I wasn't sorry. These guys deliver deceptively-simple harmonies, and I was immediately smitten by their sixties pop sensibilities. They'll be returning this year to SXSW, so you can fall in love with them for yourself.

This one is from their live-to-tape self-titled album of 2010.

Finns at SXSW: French Films

I finally crawled out of my hole and acknowledged that SXSW is coming to town. Looking over the music list, French Films caught my eye, mainly because they are from Finland. According to their website, they are influenced by "dreaming, cold & dark winters, and being alive." I find their album indicative of this.

I present their song "Golden Sea" off the eponymous album.

The Do (It Again)

French/Finnish lovelies The Do already have Last Choice's heart. Their sophmore album "Both Ways Open Jaws" has recently been released globally, and it's been spinning at the local station KVRX 91.7FM. While I don't find as many favorite singles on this album, this bit of off-kilter pop loveliness is a better album-as-a-product-itself.

Enjoy "Too Insistent" off the album, and go bedazzle your eyebrows, for heaven's sake.

Not Reinhardt

DJANGO DJANGO play pop. Art-pop, or avant-pop if you will. I've read multiple (accurate) comparisons with The Beta Band. Labeled as one of the bands to watch 2012, these Brits are already making it big time in european radio and other more current media. They are coming to the U.S. for the first time this March and, of course, they'll be playing during SXSW.

This is the single "Default" from the excellent debut album Django Django, already out. Catchy as hell, just as your average Last Choice pick. You can download a remix of this song on their facebook page.

Urgent Action

POLIÇA (polish for urgent action?) is R&B-leaning, dubby, triphoppy, proggy, relaxing music. Also, an example of auto-tune put to good use (not that Sufjan hasn't made that point a long time ago already).
Gayngs leader Ryan Olson heads this project that involves some collaboration with non-Vernon Bon Iver dude. The soothing voice is Channy Casselle.
They're getting a lot of very well-deserved hype. Jay-Z blogged about it right as he was having a kid and all, so I guess he really likes them.

They're coming to Austin on February 24th. If you're in town, head down to the Mohawk.

The whole album is out now. I bought it, and I'm loving it. Here's the video for the single "Lay Your Cards Out", from a couple of months ago.



And here's a live session:

Jackalope Abduction

Miike Snow are releasing their new album "Happy to you" on March 26. So far they've released a few songs, all proving, at least to me, that the fun and catchy tunes that made their debut so awesome was not a fluke.

Plus they'll be here for SxSW debuting their new stuff.

Listen and watch their new single Paddling Out:



Photo courtesy of Silver Tongue.

Not that Destro.

When I first heard the word Destro, a sultry queen of sexual fantasy was not the first thing that came to mind:




I haven't been able to find out much about the new Destro, except what her new video reveals (which actually turns out to be quite a lot). The track is produced by classic anderson and I'm told is the pre-curser to an EP later this month. I'll keep my ear to the ground and let you know when more songs drop.

Niki, the dove and the fox

Niki and The Dove are a Swedish electric pop duo consisting of one Malin Dahlström and one Gustaf Karlöf. Malin has that icy voice that actually seems to be a staple of nordic female singers... you can hear tones of Bjork, Oh Land, Likke Li, even a bit of Nico in there (for the record, I know Nico is German). It's pretty but somehow distant and cold. Gustaf packs a lot in the music, it's epic and theatrical and goes really well with Malin's voice. But what surprised me the most was that there's definitely some soul/R&B influence hidden somewhere in there.

This and Andrew Bird are so far my two must see SxSW acts. While Andrew will probably be hard to see, I'm betting Niki and The Dove will be easy pickings.

This is the brand new video for their first SubPop backed single "The Fox." It's pretty awesome and I love the design for it.



Also, for all you posters and readers out there... there is a nifty SXSW2012 tag on this. We'll be marking southby bands that we feature in the blog with that tag, if you ever want to take a look all you have to do is write SXSW2012 on the search engine and you will find them all in one place!

Photo courtesy of SubPop Records

Cults of Personality

There's a few living personalities in music that deserve their cult status: The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and a few others. All of them keep working, writing and performing with various degrees of success. Some, like the Stones, have aged surprisingly well after years of abuse. Others, like Dylan, have not fared so well (in my opinion). But I don't think any of them have actually gotten better.

I think there's a case to be made for Leonard Cohen actually being better today than when he started.

His new album, Old Ideas, is amazing. Listen to this shit:

Tell me again, when I'm clean and I'm sober,
tell me again, when I've seen through the horror,
tell me again, tell me over and over,
tell me that you want me then... amen.



Columbia records is doing a tribute to Leonard by getting artists to cover some of his classics. So far the likes of Bradford Cox, Cold War Kids, Greg Dulli, Bill Callahan and Cults have given it a shot. You can keep track of the recordings on Columbia Record's Vimeo page (right here). Here is Cult's version of "Everybody Knows."